Will we be wiped out by a super-eruption?

STOP worrying about Earth-bound asteroids - save your sleepless nights for massive volcanic eruptions. They pose twice as much of a threat to civilisation as impacts from outer space.

Cosmic bodies with a diameter of more than 1 kilometre hit the Earth once every 100,000 years or so. On today's crowded planet, the dust storms and wildfires created by such impacts would wipe out over a billion people. But super-eruptions capable of wreaking this kind of havoc happen around once every 50,000 years, says earth scientist Michael Rampino of New York University.

And while governments are waking up to the asteroid threat and considering defence plans, no one even knows how to predict the next super-eruption. Rampino's warnings are based on investigations of the geological remnants left by previous super-eruptions. Volcanoes in Yellowstone Park and Long Valley in California have erupted three times in the past 2 million years, each ...

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